Renzi sworn in as Italy's youngest premier

Leads youngest-ever team, half of them women

(ANSA) - Rome, February 22 - Matteo Renzi was sworn in
Saturday as Italy's youngest premier.
The Democratic Party (PD) leader and former Florence mayor,
39, leads a team of 16 ministers, eight of them women, with an
average age of 47, also the youngest ever.
Renzi has vowed to overhaul the jobs market and the tax and
education systems in four months.

Later Saturday he will leave for Florence to prepare his
speech for a confidence vote in the Senate Monday and the House
Tuesday.

Former Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development deputy director Pier Carlo Padoan did not get back
from a G20 meeting in Australia in time to be sworn in to the
key post of economy minister at the presidential palace.
Renzi thanked his supporters on Twitter ahead of his
swearing-in by President Giorgio Napolitano at the Qurinale
Palace.
"Thanks for the messages. Tough, difficult task.
"But we're Italy, we'll do it.
"One vow: stay ourselves," tweeted the PD leader, who
ousted his party colleague Enrico Letta nine days ago.

Security was tight around Rome's political offices with
the memory of a mentally unstable gunman who wounded two
Carabinieri police officers in front of the premier's office as
Letta's cabinet was being sworn in up the Quirinale Hill on
April 28.

Renzi takes power after torpedoing the coalition
government led by his Letta last week for being too slow on
enacting reforms to streamline the political system and revive
the country's troubled economy.

"I have accepted the responsibility of giving Italy a
government of hope," Renzi said after three hours of talks with
Napolitano Friday in which he dropped his formal "reservation"
about accepting a government-formation mandate and presented the
new executive.
Renzi, an energetic, telegenic character who has been
compared to the young Tony Blair, said his administration was
aiming to last until the end of the parliamentary term in 2018.

He stressed that it would start work Saturday "to do the
things that need doing straight away, otherwise the impression
is one of conservation for conservation".

The new government "has the chance to achieve reforms that
have not be done for years," he said.
"The country has no alternative".

Italy is slowly emerging from its longest postwar
recession, but the recovery is weak and economists say
structural reforms are needed to give business a lasting boost
and cut record unemployment of over 12%, with over four in 10
under-25s out of work.
Napolitano - who had engineered Letta's government to end
months of deadlock after last year's inconclusive general
election - said he was fully backing the new administration, and
denied reports of tension between himself and the
premier-in-waiting.
"There was no arm-wrestling," Napolitano said.
"This is an opportunity we cannot afford to waste... I
agree with Matteo Renzi on the need to achieve institutional and
economic reforms in a short period".

The head of State said he also agreed with Renzi that the
government should last until 2018.

Renzi will be the third consecutive premier not directly
elected by the Italian people.

Deals between parties led to the creation of Letta's
administration and the emergency technocrat government of Mario
Monti in 2011.

The new administration will be supported by the same
majority as Letta's, with outgoing Angelino Alfano's New Centre
Right (NCD) as junior partner.

Alfano is the leader of a group of centre-right moderates
who split from Silvio Berlusconi's revived Forza Italia (FI)
party when it rejected the ex-premier's bid to scupper Letta
after the PD insisted on a Senate ban for the media magnate
following a tax-fraud conviction.

He was deputy premier and interior minister in Letta's
executive, but he will only serve the latter role under Renzi.

Renzi said this week that his government would seek to
achieve one major reform every month until May, starting this
month with a new election law to replace the dysfunctional old
system that was declared unconstitutional in December.

An election-reform bill Renzi negotiated with centre-right
leader Berlusconi is currently being examined in parliament.

"This will be followed immediately afterwards by labour
reforms in March, public-administration reforms in April and
fiscal (reforms) in May," Renzi said Monday.

Berlusconi has said his Forza Italia (FI) party would
conduct "responsible opposition" to the government while
cooperating with Renzi on reforms.

In addition the election-law deal, Renzi also has an
agreement with Berlusconi to change the Constitution to strip
the Senate of its lawmaking powers to make it easier to pass
legislation, turning the Upper House into a leaner assembly of
local-government representatives, and to abolish the country's
provincial governments and bring some powers back to central
government from the regions.

The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), the
second-biggest group in parliament, are staunchly opposed to the
new government.